The Spalding Method at a Glance

Several times throughout the course of earning my reading endorsement, there were moments when I wondered when everything would “click” together. I had a ton of information that I was trying to process, and process it did, but in bits, when what I was looking for was the big “Aha!” moment. I had many small epiphanies, as I made my way through understanding what how to take all these facts that I knew and piece them together in a meaningful way, but perhaps, the biggest moment of “Eureka!” came to me only when I became certified in learning the Spalding method.

The Spalding Method takes the two subjects most dear to me –English and Reading—and combines them in such a way that knowing how to read (the act of putting sounds together to make words and to understand those words so that they have meaning and connection) becomes impossibly easy to do. If you have a reader at home that struggles with any aspect of reading, the Spalding Method will be a beacon of hope and success for your child, and I am not one to exaggerate.

First, the Spalding Method believes in going back to the basics, so the first thing a student masters is all 70 sounds of the phonograms (letters and letter combinations that make up one or more sounds). Not only do they learn all of the sounds, but they also learn the rules of when the phonogram can and cannot be used. And, we’re not talking about just older kids – have you ever seen a class of second graders repeat sounds and rules with absolute certainty? Let me tell you, it’s a sight to see!

The Spalding Method also ensures that the print and sound connection is solidified in the student’s mind. Handwriting is practiced, and while being written by the student, the student says all the sounds of that particular phonogram. Talk about semantic encoding (learning in such a way that keeps information in the long-term memory).

What follows (very succinctly) include vocabulary instruction, reading comprehension instruction, writing instruction (grammar, too!), and assessments that track the progression of reading growth. I hate to say something is fail proof, but folks, some things just are ….

Melissa M. Loukas

Excellence in Academics Tutoring, LLC.

"We work with parents, so their children excel."

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It Is as Easy as ABC ... Really!

So easy, in fact, that the letters "A," "B," and "C" don't even enter the equation in learning how to read ... well, not until much later, anyway. The reason this is so correlates to the idea of what reading experts call Phonemic Awareness (PA). Phonemic Awareness is the idea that words are made of individual sounds, and because of this, these individual sounds can be manipulated to make new words (How the Brain Learns to Read 33).

According to the National Reading Panel, phonemic awareness and letter knowledge (knowledge that the letters of the alphabet correspond to a sound, or phoneme, in spoken speech) are the two best predictors of how well a child will learn to read during his first two years of instruction. So, even though there is always controversy in whether a phonemic approach vs. a whole language approach (that learning how to read can be acquired through the way spoken language is acquired) is better, research indicates that children who have systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness do better. And if you think about it, it is logical for the following reasons:

• thorough instruction in the basics of reading does not focus on the letter, but the sound of the letter, or if you want to be fancy, the phoneme. In fact, practice at first, focuses on nonsense words, because explicit instruction in hearing the different sounds in a "unit" is more important than realizing that the /b/ sound is appointed to the letter "b." If a learning reader cannot distinguish between the /b/ and /d/ sound, what difference does it make if the child knows what "b" and "d" is?


• mastery of phonemic awareness leads to learning readers becoming better spellers. If a student knows that the sounds /m/ /a/ /p/, put together, spell "map," it is only because proper instruction in phonemic awarness allows the child to understand that those sounds put together make a word that has a meaning.


• Meaning, then, leads to comprehension, and comprehension is key for students learning how to read. That is a key reason why reading instruction based on phonemic awareness is much more beneficial than instruction based on a whole reading approach. Frequently, if you take a word from a book that a student knows because of a whole reading approach, and isolate it, the student will not be able to read it outside of the context she knows. However, if a student knows the sounds (phonemes) of a word, she can read that word, independent of whether it is in her favorite bedtime book.

Ultimately, systematic and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness is key to having a successful reader at home. Of course, as the National Reading Panel suggests, there are other contributing factors, such as quality and intensity of instruction, the quality of teacher or tutor, and the motivation of the student. However, with a solid base of instruction being based on phonemic awareness, with the right instructor and motivations, the other factors fall into place, nicely.

For more information about finding a quality tutor, please visit my website, http://www.excellenceinacademicstutoring.com/. For further reading from Melissa M. Loukas, please visit englishtutorblog.com.